It's time to lock and load on gun control

In this photo made with a fisheye lens on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013, five used military style rifles are all that is available in the rack that usually has over twenty new models for sale at Duke's Sport Shop in New Castle, Pa. Store manager Mike Fiota says the few there are on consignment from individuals. President Barack Obama is expected to announce measures Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, on a broad effort to reduce gun violence that will include proposed bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines as well as more than a dozen executive orders aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to stricter gun control. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

Monday, on the one-month anniversary of the slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults with a high-powered assault weapon at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, President Obama made it clear during his first 2013 press conference that he would “vigorously pursue” measures to tighten gun control laws.

“My point is not to worry about the politics,” he told the White House press corps.

The same day, a bipartisan group of Delaware County mayors echoed the president’s sentiments at a meeting organized by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition. Six Republican and six Democratic mayors were at the event in Media as well as other municipal officials such as Media Tax Collector Bob Dimond, a Korean War veteran who formerly served as mayor of East Lansdowne.

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“We recognize the right of an individual to keep and bear arms is settled law, but all of our rights have limits and I cannot see a reasonable use for high-capacity magazines or guns modeled after military weapons,” said Dimond.

His observation accurately summarizes the crux of the problem behind the massacres that have occurred with sickening regularity in the United States in the last 30 years including the execution of 12 people in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last year and the killing of 32 teachers and students at Virginia Tech in 2008, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. All were executed with assault weapons with high-capacity magazines. Fifty-eight others were injured in Aurora and 17 were injured at Virginia Tech during the gun rampages because the barrages of bullets were so powerful.

In Newtown, Conn., the suspected shooter, after allegedly killing his mother at their home, mowed down the 26 children and staff members at Sandy Hook elementary school with 150 rounds from an AR-15-style Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle in a matter of minutes before taking his own life on Dec. 14.

“Mass shootings like the one in Newtown and Aurora become far more deadly when the killers use these kinds of guns,” noted Dimond.

And yet, representatives of the biggest gun lobby in the United States, the National Rifle Association, insist on shamelessly invoking the refrain, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”

They also purposely drown out any discussion of responsible gun control legislation with disingenuous claims of Second Amendment infringements.

The president has noted that such a tactic is “a pretty effective way of ginning up fear on the part of gun owners that somehow the federal government’s about to take all your guns away.”

It also helps to fulfill what increasingly appears to be the sole purpose of lobbies like the NRA — to help gun manufacturers sell guns. By fueling fears that the right to bear arms will be eliminated, it has managed to use the Newtown massacre as a means of bolstering gun sales all over the United States, including the Delaware Valley.

But it is also becoming increasingly apparent that the American people of all political parties are not buying the argument that restricting sales of assault weapons and high-powered magazines is a violation of Second Amendment rights, as proven by the 204 Pennsylvania members of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Forty-one percent are Republicans, 55 percent are Democrats and 3 percent are independents.

Media Mayor Bob McMahon, a Vietnam War veteran, said the coalition not only supports banning civilians’ access to military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but wants background checks on all guns sales including those at gun shows. They also want to make gun trafficking a federal crime.

“What we need from Congress is a plan,” said McMahon.

We applaud the many mayors for adding their voices to the growing bipartisan cry for responsible gun control legislation. The louder that voice becomes, the less federal lawmakers may find the big bucks of the NRA appealing in the next election year.